A Boy's Journey Into Manhood Reader's Guide: College-Age/Adult
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THE EDUCATION OF KEVIN POWELL: A BOY’S JOURNEY INTO MANHOOD READER’S GUIDE: COLLEGE-AGE/ADULT Created by Kevin Powell [email protected] Tayllor Johnson [email protected] Message from the Author: Peace everyone! Thank you for taking the time to read my book, and this Reader’s Guide we created especially for you. My autobiography is the most important thing I have ever written in my life. I wrote it because I think it is mad important that we all tell our stories in some form, especially if we have survived and overcome much. For me writing, art, being creative, is not only about telling my truths, but also about healing and being self-empowered. In fact, writing is as important to me as breathing, and reading and writing have helped and saved my life so many times. It is my sincere hope my book will do the same for you in some way. HOW TO USE THIS READER’S GUIDE This Reader’s Guide is a resource for educators and workshop facilitators of The Education of Kevin Powell: A Boy’s Journey into Manhood. This guide includes several activities that anyone can facilitate in the college classroom, adult education center, reading group, or home. The activities aim to encourage critical thinking and generate interactive conversations on the themes of identity, race, gender, personal development, activism, and leadership. CREATING A SAFE SPACE Kevin Powell touches on many topics that will touch various people, no matter their background, in different ways. Please take the time before diving into this guide to establish guidelines for discussion and safe dialogue. Please consider writing those guidelines down as a group and putting them in a place for all to see. CREATING A BLOGGING SPACE 1. Go to: https://www.blogger.com/about/#create 2. Connect to a Gmail account 3. Go to settings and click private and add readers from class/session 4. Encourage participants to comment on each other’s blogs 5. Set a guideline for sharing and reading blogs CONTENTS SECTION 1: A REFLECTION Get to know who young Kevin Powell is and the environment that shaped him. Through a series of reflections, readers are encouraged to examine the setting and context of Kevin’s childhood as well as their own. SECTION 2: GET WRITE In this section participants, will create their own blogging space to reflect regularly on the readings, the discussion questions, and current events, as they relate to the reading material SECTION 3: BE THE CHANGE The activities in this section focus on identity, manhood, and change. Participants will reflect on important moments of personal growth in Kevin’s life and in their own, and investigate the process of personal change and identity SECTION 4: STANDING FOR JUSTICE This final section focuses on activism, leadership, gender, mental health, and violence. In this section, participants will explore some of the key historical moments that Kevin participated in, decode messages about race, gender roles, violence against women and girls, and explore civil and human rights leadership, then and now. We hope that you will find the activities in this guide beneficial and inspirational to your youth. Please feel free to share feedback participants produce with Kevin. He would love to talk with you and the participants: [email protected] SECTION 1: WHO IS KEVIN POWELL? A. Childhood in Pictures “One day my mother told me we were going to get my picture taken….” In the first chapter, Kevin Powell describes the day he took his first portrait as a kid, which became the book cover. Group Discussion Questions • Did you (or your kids) ever take a photo like this? • If not, why not? • How were you dressed? Did you • How did you (or your kids) feel when the photo was taken? • Did you want to have your photo taken? Why or why not? • What role, if any, did pictures like the one that Kevin took play in your childhood? • What other details can you tell us about this moment? B. Picture Day Participants should bring in pictures of them or their kids when they were much younger. Ask participants to submit their first blog reflecting on a picture from their childhood or their kids’ childhood. Reflection Questions • When/Where was the photo was taken? • Who else was there? • Where is the picture now? • What role did pictures play in how you grew up? Consider the role pictures play today with smartphones and social media. • Looking back, would you have posed, preserved, or taken the photo differently? C. My Neighborhood “…that Jersey City, where I was born and where I would spend the first eighteen years of my life, began to disrobe itself, fascinating me, annoying me, and tempting me simultaneously.” Kevin describes the sights and sounds of the Jersey City where he spent the first 18 years of his life. “Like the rapture of playing on the black-and-gray gravel of Audubon Park: climbing the monkey bars, coasting hands-free down the sliding board, or kicking my feet toward the clouds as my mother pushed me on the swings.” Ask participants to make a list of the places, sights, sounds, smells, people, and colors that make up their own neighborhood. What are the memories that you want to hold on to? Next, with a partner discuss where the neighborhood you are from: Group Discussion • What neighborhood are you from? • If you could describe your neighborhood in one word, what would it be? • Do you still live in that neighborhood? Why or why not? • How has that neighborhood changed since you live there? • Would you go back to live? Why or why not? Next, write a blog about a description of your neighborhood growing up. Try to create imagery just that is clear and creative as you write about your neighborhood. Reflection Questions: • What does your neighborhood look like? • What does your neighborhood represent for you? • Who lived there when you lived there? • Who lives there now? • What role did politics play in the evolution of your neighborhood? D. Poverty Poverty is a repeated theme in Kevin’s autobiography. It in fact dominates much of his life. As a group discuss the following: Group Discussion • What does the word poverty mean to you? • Do you identify at all with Kevin or his mother in how poverty affected them mentally, physically, both? • Is poverty a form of trauma? Why or why not? • What does the eradication of poverty mean to you? • What do you think it will take to overcome poverty? • Look at the first website that comes to mind when you think of current events? Is poverty mentioned on the front page? Next, write a blog titled: Poverty Has Many Faces. Please use the questions below to help: Reflection Questions: • If poverty could look like a person, what would they look like? • Male? Female? Gender non-conforming? • How would they vote? Who would they vote for? • How has poverty revealed itself in your life or the loves of people you know? • Who is to blame for poverty? • Where is the hope for those in poverty? • What would/do you do to combat poverty in your community and country? . SECTION 2: GET WRITE A. The Three Powell Sisters In Chapters 12 and 13, Kevin writes about his mother, Shirley, and her sisters, Birdie and Cathy. The Powell sisters lived through an impoverished childhood in rural South Carolina, and together they moved north to escape being “the help” and the grueling life of picking cotton for White landowners. The women in Kevin’s family had a major impact on him. After reading these chapters, invite participants to consider the important life lessons that Kevin learned from his mother and aunts. Group Discussion • How do you define womanhood? • The Powell Sisters left South Carolina to seek a better life for themselves. Reflect on what geolocation means in terms of safety for marginalized peoples. • How did Kevin depict the life of single mothers? How does that compare to other depictions of single mothers, either in your life or in the media? • Kevin writes about his Aunt Birdie, “But, whenever she was around, I stared at her and when she caught me looking, she’d smile and wink slyly, as if she knew that her grand escapades excited me.” Did you ever have a family member or friend that inspired you or changed the course of your life? Who were they? • In what ways do you identify with the Powell women? Write a short blog (400-500) words about how women in your life have influenced you as the Powell Sisters influenced Kevin to become who he is today. B. Poetry/Spoken Word “My desire to write poetry indefinitely replaced my teenage dream of being a novelist. Poetry represented the kind of short bursts of ideas and energy that I carried with me every single day, demanding to be released.” Kevin’s own poetry begins each chapter of his memoir, The Education of Kevin Powell: Boy’s Journey to Manhood. Group Discussion • What role does poetry play in your life, if any? • What activity or art form makes you feel as free as Kevin did when performing? • How or how do you not identify with needing to have your voice heard? • What spaces do you feel comfortable expressing yourself freely? • If you do not have that space, why or why not? Pick a section or phrase from The Education of Kevin Powell and write a poem in response to or exploring further that image, idea, or character. Please define poetry in structure and sound for yourself.